Hiring & retention: Finders, keepers

Source: Energy Digital

Date :5/31/2007 10:30:45 AM

It’s getting increasingly difficult to find, and keep, top talent. Best employers and staffing experts offer their advice on how you can win in the talent war

By David Weldon

As one of the largest employers in Texas, and a member of the country’s very exclusive Fortune 15 club, Valero Energy Corporation is truly a power to be reckoned with.

Frequently cited as one of the nation’s best places to work, Valero Energy would seem to have no trouble finding talent in its San Antonio headquarters market, or at any of its various other locations. But nothing could be further from the truth.

“This is the tightest job market we have seen since the late 1990s. It’s very hard to find employees,” says Dan Hilbert, employment manager for the 23,000-employee company.

When this Texas staffing giant reports that it’s getting tough to find talent, you can bet things are really starting to head south in the job market.

Valero Energy obviously hires workers for a wide variety of jobs, but Hilbert says the greatest needs are always for engineers, advanced programmers, and skilled trades people in several refinery operations areas. The San Antonio plant, the company’s largest facility, is made up of an approximate 60/40 union to non-union worker split.

Hiring challenges go far beyond the great San Antonio market for this energy company. Hilbert says Valero currently operates 19 refineries, and has 5,000 retail stores throughout the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Aruba, some company owned, and some franchises.

What Hilbert would like to find the most of right now are skilled workers with college degrees, but he says his efforts of late have been “brutal.” It is currently taking, on average, 60 days to fill a job requisition.

That is a dramatic turn-around in the local job market, for a company widely known for its generous benefits offerings and retirement plan. In addition to robust medical and dental coverage, the company offers a 401K plan and a pension plan, plus the full array of perks and dependent care programs that a cafeteria style benefits program usually covers.

“Valero wins all sorts of employment awards,” Hilbert says, and employees take full advantage of the benefits offerings. But they equally value the company’s efforts on behalf of local charities and volunteer programs.

“We are viewed as a very good neighbor, and that is a strong selling point with attracting new talent,” Hilbert says. “Employees like to be around good people.”

While Hilbert sweats over finding all the new talent the company needs, his counterpart Shelley Faris also takes advantage of the company’s strong corporate culture to hold onto what talent the company already has. Faris says her latest challenges aren’t with employees wanting to leave Valero, but the company is seeing a large number of employees retire in the past few years.

As manager of employee services at Valero, Faris is heavily involved with retention strategies and programs. She says employees within Valero generally fall into two groups.

The retail store generally employee entry level staff with limited skills and experience. Turnover here is high, and the average length of employment is three years.

The corporate offices and refineries employ higher skilled workers. Key staff includes engineers, operations staff and business process personnel. Skills are needed “in all disciplines,” Faris says, and the average length of employment is 12 years.

“We have a very competitive benefits program, a very unique culture, and we like to promote from within,” Faris confirms. “Employees are our best assets, and we really believe that.”

Putting its money where its mouth is, as-it-were, Faris says Valero strives to have the leading benefits programs in all of its markets, has created numerous employee recognition programs, and encourages workers to be involved with local civic causes. These programs mutually serve to tell employees that they are valued for the role they play in both the internal Valero community, and in the greater community at large.

Such retention practices are very important in a tight labor market, Faris says, where staff turnover only adds to the pain on the hiring end. The key to holding onto valued talent is to make them feel like exactly that, she advises.

Beyond traditional benefits, Faris says top employers should help their workers to feel secure in their job, to have a proper work-life balance, and flexibility with schedules. In addition, it is important to invest in the employee’s skills and career development. The bottom line, she says, is that the best way to hold onto a valued employee is to make them as marketable as possible.

Wanted: Super Candidate

Staffing expert Jim Lanzalotto would go one step further in his advice to executives on how to find and keep top talent — treat them like your customers.

As vice president at staffing company Yoh in Philadelphia, part of Yoh Services LLC, a Day & Zimmerman Company, Lanzalotto helps provide clients with long term and short term temporary help, as well as managed staffing services. Yoh specializes in a few top industries, such as information technology, scientific, health care and telecommunications. One of the largest staffing companies in the country, Yoh operates in 75 markets, and has $380 million in annual revenues.

Lanzalotto also expects the job market to be tight this year, especially in the markets he serves. Still, he calls the job markets “strong and solid, but not irrational.”

Perhaps more so than a new labor shortage emerging, Lanzalotto would call it a skills gap.

“Hiring managers are becoming more finite in what they are looking for,” Lanzalotto says. “The danger is with what would be called the super candidate syndrome.”

By that, Lanzalotto says hiring managers want every job candidate to be able to hit the ground running, with all skills possible, and no training needed. That includes not only skills in the employee’s area or expertise, but also industry or market skills, and a full range of so-called soft skills for good measure. That obviously narrows down the candidate pool considerably.

Lanzalotto says there are several areas where hiring managers fall flat when trying to lure the best talent. The top four mistakes are creating vague job descriptions; omitting key information from a job posting; having inflated expectations of a candidate; and poor communication with a candidate after the initial interview.

On the retention front, Lanzalotto says the most common complaints by employees are inadequate compensation, little growth opportunity, and a poor work/life balance.

Shortcomings All Around

Hiring managers aren’t solely to blame in the skills/jobs mismatch. Much of that goes to today’s recruiters, according to national staffing expert Fran Quittel.

Quittel has written workplace and career advice columns for a number of national publications, and runs her own staffing consultancy. The author of Fire Power and The IT Career Guide, and the well-known Career Babe online, Quittel says much of the unreasonable expectations by employers are due to recruiters that really don’t understand the jobs they are trying to fill.

This puts more of the burden on the job seeker to know what the employer needs, and to do a better job of selling themselves, Quittel says. “People want you to have it all. The job market is very unforgiving.”

Quittel also echoes the messages on retention cited above. “A best place to work is one that helps me to stay current in my skill sets, where I can have a steady job, where I can feel good about the company’s values and ethics, and where I can get full benefits that cover my entire family life.”

Adding still another wrinkle to the hiring picture are antiquated job descriptions.

Staffing expert David Foote, president of Foote Partners LLC in New Canaan, CT, has been working as a staffing consultant in the IT industry for years, and regularly tracks workplace issues, including salaries, skills premiums, professional certification demands, and job title trends.

Foote says most employers still use a variety of traditional job titles in their hiring strategies that no longer really fit the skill combinations they are seeking. And he firmly agrees that the super candidate syndrome has gripped the job market.

“Employers are no longer just looking for an Oracle DBA (database administrator), for example,” Foote says. “They want an Oracle DBA, who has worked in their industry, and has X number of years of experience in that industry.” Add to that, a desire that the candidate have business skills, project skills, and often even cultural or language skills, he says.

“Companies are getting so specific in what they want that it is getting increasingly difficult to find the talent they need,” Foote says.

The solution is not rocket science, Foote argues. It’s more common sense: job rotation programs, mentoring, coaching, project management experience, internal promotions, and offering workers multiple career paths within the organization. All of these strategies will help the employer develop the talent they need in-house, and keep them where they belong.